EDMONTON ALTA.: JANUARY 13, 2013--Edmonton Oilers Ryan Smyth passes the puck to Taylor Hall during a game of shinny for fans on a rink at Hawrelak Park on January 13, 2013 in Edmonton. Greg Southam/Edmonton Journal

After the NHL locked out its players for the entire 2004-05 season, hockey fans across Canada responded by filling the arenas from the onset of the 2005-06 season until the lockout of 2012-13 was launched last October.

Scarcity, it turns out, intensifies need just as surely in the NHL as it once did in the so-called Energy Crisis of the 1970s. You take away our hockey team, our heroes, our National Pastime. We’ll show you, said the fans, gimme more tickets, gimme a beer, a jersey, whatever. Just don’t leave me.

So, no one should be under any illusion that hockey fans in Canadian-based cities, as well as some U.S. ones (hello, St. Paul, Minn.) will troop back to game following the most recent lockout, which wiped out nearly half the current NHL season.

This is a lockout that offended many fans and frustrated everyone connected with the NHL. Make no mistake. How did Oilers captain Shawn Horcoff, for one, feel about being back at it, four months later?

“Well, excited,” Horcoff said. “Apologetic to the fans, and not just the fans but all the people involved with the NHL, the workers, obviously, who were laid off or lost their jobs because of it.

“It was a process that was unnecessary and unfortunate, but that’s in the past. We’ll leave it there, move forward and try to put a good product on the ice.”

As one gesture of good will to the fans and the city, the Oilers staged a well-planned (in the works for a couple of weeks) shinny game on an old-time-looking rink in Hawrelak Park, giving just a few short hours notice to the public (at the insistence of the City of Edmonton), lest the park be overrun with the faithful.

As it was, the front gate to the park was closed after Edmontonians learned via Twitter or radio or word-of-mouth that the Oilers were going to lace ‘em up in the park, and converged on the scenic recreation area beside the North Saskatchewan River.

All in all, the 45-minute game of shinny was a smash hit But as magnanimous gestures toward their loyal fans go, it lacked a certain je ne sais quoi.

Such an event, especially during minor hockey week, is a no-brainer for the Oilers, really, and probably should happen, in some fashion, annually.

The Oilers have other plans to acknowledge their fans — discounts on concessions and such — so it’s best to wait and see how that plays out.

By comparison, in Ottawa, Senators owner Eugene Melnyk held a news conference on Sunday to pledge that his club has much to do to earn back the trust of the fans. To that end, each season ticket subscriber in Ottawa will get one home game free of charge this season. There will be free parking at the home opener, 50 per cent off at the concessions, on and on.

Each NHL franchise is free to find its own way to win over however many fans may be ticked off a them, and the Oilers, along with most other Canadian-based franchises, have extremely passionate fans.

It’s not really about the make-good gestures or tangible rewards. It’s more about attitude, something Melnyk and the Senators demonstrated in abundance on Sunday, an attitude of sincerity, a propensity to make amends.

An Ottawa NHL franchise, mind you, hasn’t won a Stanley Cup since the 1920s. The expanson version of the Senators has advanced as far as the Stanley Cup final series only once, and that was in 2007.

The Oilers’ fifth and last Cup was in 1990, 23 years ago. Still, there’s a certain swagger woven into the DNA of the franchise, an unmistakable arrogance. It’s not a club that does humble well at all.

It may well be that the best gift the Oilers can give their fans is a young, exciting, swashbuckling team that is about to make a breakthrough. Or so they hope.

It could well be best to look to the present and enjoy an uptempo team that could well be poised to start an inexorable climb to the top of the standings.

Maybe it is best, as Horcoff said, to put the lockout(s) in the past and move on.

After all, wasn’t the 2004-05 lockout meant to resolve the Oilers economic troubles and set them on the pathway to competitiveness?

Since then, they enjoyed one run to Game 7 of the Cup finals, than settled into the muck of six consecutive non-playoff finishes, including a 30th, 30th, 29th bottoming out in the last three years.

There is much this gifted young team needs to atone for, not merely a half-season lockout.

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